36 posts in this topic

+jnelsoninjax 4,267

The tech media likes to describe Internet image board 4chan as a lawless, unruly place, but apparently there's justice in the Web's Wild West after all.

An anonymous 4chan user and Burger King employee posted a photo of himself stepping in bins of lettuce to the site on the evening of July 16. The original poster captioned the image with "This is the lettuce you eat at Burger King."

But some 4chan users were appalled by the image and decided to take action. They grabbed the GPS data included in the picture in an effort to pinpoint where the photograph had been taken, the Cleveland Scene reports.

In addition to contacting local news media in Mayfield Heights, Ohio, where the image originated, users also managed to pull up the address and telephone number of the exact Burger King location where the event allegedly took place. E-mails and phone calls quickly followed.

And according to Hypervocal, it only took 4Chan users about 15 minutes to expose the alleged perpetrator.

A montage of the 4chan users' responses was posted to Reddit on Tuesday.

The Huffington Post contacted a manager at the Mayfield Heights Burger King, who said that the alleged perpetrator was a long-time employee. Though the manager refused to disclose other details, she stated this was the employee's first disciplinary incident in his employment history.

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jwjw1 93

It took hackers just 15 minutes to find an employee who posted a sickening photo online

The restaurant where this photo was taken is independently-owned and operated by a BURGER KING? franchisee. The franchisee has taken swift action to investigate this matter and terminated the three employees involved in the incident."

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Growled 3,879

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allknow 6

i worked in fast food for about a year when i was young (18-19) and not once did i see anyone do anything to the food in a bad way. But that was back in a different generation, 1990's.. white kids now a days are mostly handicapped in one way or another.

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theyarecomingforyou 8,871

This stuff could have easily been out-of-date and he was just attention seeking.

There is nothing to suggest this lettuce went onto food.

Exactly. For all we know it could have been out-of-date lettuce that was about to be thrown out. Regardless, it's still an irresponsible thing to do and has huge PR implications for the company, so even if he was 'innocent' he deserves to lose his job.

As always, this sort of behaviour is the exception and shouldn't be taken as representative of the industry. I used to manage a busy store for the largest franchise in the QSR sector and the reality is that hygiene standards are very high and regularly monitored, both internally and externally - when issues do occur they're usually related to technical issues (like faulty refrigeration) or genuine mistakes and are caught before any risk is posed to customers, though obviously I can't speak for the particular store in question.

You regularly see scare stories like this but you've got to consider that there are tens of thousands of stores employing hundreds of thousands of people serving millions of meals a day. It would be surprising if things like this didn't happen (though that doesn't make them at all justifiable).

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+Xinok 292

It took hackers just 15 minutes to find an employee who posted a sickening photo online

The restaurant where this photo was taken is independently-owned and operated by a BURGER KING? franchisee. The franchisee has taken swift action to investigate this matter and terminated the three employees involved in the incident."